


With Wonder in Their Eyes

by elissastillstands



Series: The Sky Above, the Sea Below [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Getting Together, Meeting the Parents, Shore Leave, Side Joann Owosekun/Keyla Detmer, USS Shenzhou (Star Trek), Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 03:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elissastillstands/pseuds/elissastillstands
Summary: Shore leave on Vulcan. First and second contacts, intersections of past and present, mediations on a red sky, told in four parts.(Companion piece to "In All Its Grandeur," can be read as a standalone)





	1. Lexicon

**Author's Note:**

> A second plotless shore leave fic, featuring all the fluff and long descriptions of the first one alongside character introspection, flashbacks, and cameos of other characters from the show. They meet people, eat dinner, walk around the city, visit a museum, and watch sunrise. There are no pretensions of plot.
> 
> Heartfelt thanks to nomisunrider for beta-reading and cheerleading!

The air tastes the same as it always does, like rust but stranger, carrying with it a near-metallic flavor which coats her tongue. Michael takes a moment to set her bag down and stretch, craning her neck from side to side and rolling her shoulders to work out the small aches which had settled in during the shuttle transit from Starbase 2. Her body protests faintly as it adjusts to the higher gravity of the planet, a tension as familiar to her as the taste of dust on the wind. “Amanda said she’ll be meeting us at the Federation embassy at 1300 Standard hours, so we should try to catch the next outcoming transport—”

“Wait a moment,” Philippa says from behind her, and Michael turns back to see her captain standing in the middle of the tarmac, her eyes wide and her cheeks ruddy. “Give me some time, Number One.”

Michael hurries back to Philippa’s side, cursing her inattentiveness. She quickly takes Philippa’s duffel bag from the other woman’s hand and wraps her free arm around Philippa’s waist, ready to support her. Michael herself might be used to the heat, and the gravity and thinner air of Vulcan, but Philippa doesn’t have the advantage of having lived for a decade and a half on the planet, and the captain had also refused to use an oxygenation hypo on the shuttle. “Philippa, I’m sorry, I didn't think—”

“No, no, I’m fine—I’m a captain of a starship, Michael, I can still outrun an Andorian on a 5G L-class,” Philippa says wryly in response to Michael’s skeptical raise of her eyebrow. She smiles, and the corners of her eyes crinkle in fondness. “I was talking about the view.”

“The view?” Michael scans the shuttleport for something that might qualify as a view. The curved roof of the arrivals terminal is paneled with metal embossed with spiraling fractals, which fans out over the shuttles as they zip back and forth and and the throngs of people pouring out onto the rust-tinted pavement, whose chatter is neither more reserved nor less raucous than it would be at other inter-system terminals. Holosigns announcing arrivals and departures light up along the polished stone walls, different scripts darting across the screens like ripples through pools of water as they cycle through all the Federation languages. Travelers shield their vibrant skin and hair with gauzy fabric against the ubiquitous heat, and the metal accents of comms and shoe buckles glint in the rich light of Vulcan’s sun, which beats down through the skylights and covers everything in a red haze so thick that it seems almost touchable.

And the sky is incarnadine, Michael realizes, a brilliant flame red, though she has always been aware of the marvel of that in the back of her mind. The vista framed by the broad entryway to the shuttleport stretches far and wide—the sun is red-gold in the red sky, and the cliffs rise from the rusty sands and loom large, bathed in the dusk-like light. In front of the crags of rock, the buildings of ShiKahr gleam like children’s toys, covered in that same red haze.

“ _Ah_ ,” Michael exhales, and she is breathless again, for all that she is used to the thin air. “That view.”

“It is stunning,” Philippa says, and in her eyes there is the same amazement as when she looked for the first time at the diamond-bright salt plains of Kells Omicron II and the towering purple caves of Zana Prime. Michael remembers the first time she set foot on Vulcan, and how she had thought that it was always sunset, or always burning, so strong is the color of the sky. “The holos don’t do it justice.”

Michael traces the silhouette of the cliffs with her eyes, squinting against the radiance. “I don’t think any holo can,” she says at last.

“I'm glad to be seeing them in person now.” Philippa’s voice is soft as she takes a step away from Michael. After a moment of confusion, Michael belatedly draws her hand back from where it had rested on Philippa’s hip. 

She is careful to keep from looking around to gauge the reactions of the people around her as she hands Philippa back her duffel, now keenly aware of their fingers brushing together as the bag transfers hands. It would have been strange to her once, the casual abundance of touch between them, but Philippa’s close presence had become a part of the fabric of her life in the past few months, as much of a constant as the view of light trails blurring out their window in warp. She now finds nothing strange in the captain's closeness. 

“Haven’t you been to ShiKahr before?” Michael asks as they make their way towards the transports to the central district.

“I’ve been here twice, yes.” Philippa’s eyes are fixed on the sky outside, yet she still neatly steps around the people cutting across their path. “The first time, I was a junior lieutenant escorting ambassadors and trying my best to present a facade of professionalism, and the second time, I was a captain and a very important representative of Starfleet—or so Starfleet told me.” A light wind sweeps through the terminal, and she pushes flyaway strands of hair out of her face, smoothing them behind her ear. “I could hardly gawk as much as I wanted to.”

“I am pleased, then,” Michael says, adjusting the weight of her bag across her shoulders. 

“Pleased at what, Number One?”

“Pleased that my humble home can make my captain and a very important representative of Starfleet _gawk_.” Michael dares to lean in close at the last word, so that the puff of air from the final plosive consonant ruffles Philippa’s hair.

Philippa's lips pull upwards into something like a sly smile, and Michael glances away, lest a laugh wrestle its way up her throat. “Well, I do believe that I am a connoisseur of beauty,” Philippa says airily. 

Michael snorts, muffling but not entirely quelling the sound. She does not have to turn to know the smile Philippa is flashing her way. “Flatterer.”

“Of you? Undoubtedly.”

Michael does turn then, and she cannot help but grin at the pleased smile on Philippa’s face as they step out beneath the burnt sky. The heated air is thick with color, and all around them the people hurry, eager to find their final destinations. 

\-----

The Federation embassy is a large and imposing building in the central district of ShiKahr, built by combining architectural features characteristic of Earth, Andor, Tellar, and Vulcan. It is a remarkable work of aesthetics and engineering, a fusion of organic jagged lines reminiscent of glaciers, smooth vaulted arches, and an ambitiously tall facade striving to shoot up into the rust-tinged clouds. The air within is held at 281 K, the average of the mean temperatures on all four of the founding planets, and as a result, the air inside is blisteringly cold for Vulcans, uncomfortably warm for Tellarites and Andorians, and unpleasantly chilly for two humans who happen to be dressed for a desert clime.

For once, Michael is grateful for the distracting cold as she and Philippa sit shoulder to shoulder on a couch tucked away at the edge of reception hall, waiting for Amanda. She has always felt a frisson of nervousness, intractable to logic, before introducing her partners to her family, and her apprehension today is more unruly than ever. Philippa had scheduled shore leave specifically so that she could meet Michael’s parents and brother all at once on their homeworld, and Michael never dared before to bring a lover here, to her home of red sand. Her nervousness stems from the incipient meeting of two entities hitherto unknown to each other. If she were not so heavily invested in a positive outcome, Michael would call the fear a form of anticipation, stemming from scientific curiosity at the prospect of a first contact.

First contact missions in Starfleet only have a 37.8% success rate. Her time on the Shenzhou might be teaching her to rely less on statistics, but Michael cannot help but understand with a dread certainty that the numbers are not on their side. 

To compound all that, their chosen couch had been designed by someone who focused on aesthetics, rather than ergonomics. Michael shifts from side to side, wincing at the lack of give in the cushions. They haven’t changed from when she first came to the embassy as a child with Sarek. “You would think that they would use a combination of furniture from all the founding planets, too,” Michael grouses, crossing her arms and burrowing her fingers against her body, “rather than handing it to the Vulcan interior designer who was in vogue at the time.”

“Is that your professional xenoanthropological verdict, Michael? All Vulcan furniture is uncomfortable?” Philippa’s voice is light, even as she rubs her arms with her hands.

“That is knowledge gleaned from my own personal experience, Captain, and it is well within the realm of validity—”

“Michael,” a voice calls from across the wide room.

Michael rises to her feet and smiles at the figure approaching them. Behind her, the couch cushions creak as Philippa also stands. “Amanda, it’s so good to see you,” Michael says, reaching out and grasping her adoptive mother’s forearms to pull her close for a brief moment, before separating to the distance mandated by propriety.

“I’m so glad you could make it. I know I’m a little late—there’ve been a string of Vulcan-programmed universal translator malfunctions in the Beta quadrant, specifically with children, and they called a group of specialists in to see if we could figure out why the translators were acting up, and of course they refuse to listen to the ten of us telling them that a rigid translation matrix simply isn’t compatible with children—” Amanda huffs out a breath and rubs her hand across her face, massaging at her temples. “Well. All I'm saying is, they should listen to us specialists, if they’re going to pull us from our actual jobs.”

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us, Dr. Grayson,” Philippa says, stepping out from behind Michael's shoulder.

“The pleasure is absolutely mine, Captain,” Amanda says, shaking hands with Philippa. “Please, call me Amanda.”

“You must then call me Philippa.”

Amanda’s lips curl into a smile. “I was preparing to undertake extreme measures to meet you face-to-face, and I’m very glad I don’t have to do so. I’ve been telling Michael to introduce you properly for months now.” 

Michael feels herself grinning despite herself at Amanda’s mock glare, and Amanda’s smile grows when Philippa brushes her fingers against Michael’s wrist. “Negotiations—I can’t believe I’m actually using that term now for a discussion where there’s a clear answer—but negotiations have gridlocked, and they've called a recess for the day. I am well in need of a break, so I’m yours for the afternoon.”

“Negotiations—I am well familiar with those,” Philippa says with a delicate snort.

“I pity you that.” Amanda glances between the two of them. “Do you want any water? I’m going to get my bag and something to drink from the rec room, and then we can leave this icebox.”

“Some water would be much appreciated, thank you,” Philippa says. 

Amanda leaves, and Philippa turns to Michael, the corners of her mouth twitching. “As first contacts go, I think I have had worse. Was that as apocalyptic as you were picturing, Number One?”

“Philippa,” Michael groans, “I was never picturing anything apocalyptic.”

“You were jumping out of your own skin while we were waiting, you know. I am the one who should be nervous in this situation; after all, I stand to be accused of unsavory designs towards your person—”

“I am fairly sure that if unsavory designs were your only design, you would have parted ways with me long before now,” Michael retorts, and then she quickly lowers her voice. “And although my statement is perfectly sound, please refrain from bringing up anything approaching the phrase _unsavory designs_ to Sarek and Amanda, even in jest. They might—”

“Michael,” Philippa says, cutting across the rising urgency of her words, “it will be fine. We will be fine.”

Michael looks at the captain then, at the tightness at the corners of her mouth which remained despite her bright smile and the hint of steeliness in her eyes, and she realizes that she is not alone in her aimless trepidation. “Of course we'll be fine,” Michael repeats, reaching out to briefly squeeze Philippa's hands. “There is nothing for you to worry about.”

Philippa raises her eyebrows. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself, Number One?”

“I am multitasking.”

Amanda comes back, a bottle of water for each of them in her hands. “Shall we, then?”

“Absolutely,” Philippa replies, rubbing her hands together one last time before reaching for the water. “Oh thank goodness it’s warm—that is glorious.”

“It's from the Vulcan rec room; they don't even want to think of anything cold while at the embassy. Warm water is better in weather like this, anyways. You learn that the hard way after a couple heat waves here.”

They pick their bags off of the floor and make their way back out into the heat of the day. When she was younger, Michael would have been wary of walking through the cobbled streets of the city with two other human women, their voices bright and brash in the red air while they exchange pleasantries about the shuttle trip and the streets of the city unspooling before them. These small, shallow conversations are now precious to her—she can hear the significance of the words shifting with each exchange, in the moments between question and answer. With every light comment regarding the trivia of the day, the architecture and the food scene and the design of the traffic lights, Philippa’s shoulders loosen a little more, along with her humor. Amanda’s smile loses its practiced diplomacy, and Michael unclasps her hands from behind her back to let them swing by her sides in time with each step. She no longer finds any reason for wariness. They pause every once in a while to exchange the _ta’al_ with passerby Philippa is introduced as Michael’s captain, and the force of the possessive is small but still marked.

“Let’s get you settled in,” Amanda says as they walk up to the Ambassador’s residence. The multi-story house is built of finely carved stone which matches the cliffs in the distance. “Then you can tell me all about what I’ve missed in the past year—everything you can, Michael, I know there are some things you can’t tell us about—”

\-----

_[First officer’s log, Stardate 399.78, Standard Earth Date 2252.139. The Shenzhou has been called to the Procyron I system to oversee the progress on a geothermal survey of Cygni VII, one of the smaller ice moons co-orbiting Andoria. The surveyors encountered large deposits of high-energy dilithium, and determining the safest way to mine these deposits as quickly as possible is of the highest importance to the Andorian council, given the geological instability of the moon. The emissions from the minerals in certain sections of the tunnels block communicator signals, so all away teams have been advised to proceed with caution…]_

_“—to Shenzhou. Georgiou to Shenzhou. Can you hear me, Shenzhou? Georgiou to Shenzhou, Shenzhou, do you copy?”_

_“Captain, as I have said, we are in a communication dead zone,” Michael says loudly, scanning the walls of the tunnel with her tricorder. It is the seventh time in approximately an hour she has gone through the action, not in hope of a different result, but simply for want of something to do “We will not be able to reach the ship.” She pauses, staring at the surface of ice before her. “We might want to conserve our comm batteries, should a retrieval take longer than anticipated.”_

_“Georgiou to Shenzhou, can you hear me? Shenzhou—damn it,” Philippa snarls, slamming her communicator shut, her knuckles white from her grip on the metal. “Damn it,” she says again, softer but with no less anger, clipping her communicator onto her belt with short, forceful movements._

_Michael moves to the far end of the chamber, as far from the rubble of the tunnel collapse as possible. She turns her tricorder off and slowly sits down, folding her legs underneath her. “The other teams will be expecting a check-in from us in two more hours. They'll realize that we're missing and check in all the comm dead zones. I estimate three to four hours until a retrieval team finds us.”_

_Philippa sits down next to her, clenching and unclenching her hands. “This was supposed to be a an easy mission, Michael. It's the only reason why both you and I went down to the surface, it was supposed to be a straightforward survey, to give us a little time to stretch our legs. And now we—” Philippa looks up at her, and her face folds. “You have a cut on your face,” she says in a thin voice._

_“What?” Michael wipes absently at her cheeks, and the fabric of her gloves comes away smeared with gritty dried blood. “It's nothing, Philippa, it's just from the debris—”_

_Philippa’s face is tight. She reaches out and gently presses her fingers against Michael's skin, the surface of her thermal gloves warm against the freezing temperatures in the ice tunnel, and Michael feels herself blush despite the cold._

_“You have seen me with far worse than a few scratches, and you'll see me with far worse again,” Michael reminds the captain, and she has to fight not to lean into the touch._

_She finds that she has to exercise a great deal of conscious restraint nowadays. Philippa has been a friend to her ever since her early days on the Shenzhou, and following Michael's promotion to the first officer position, they have begun to spend more time together, both on and off duty. Her regard for the captain has grown until it is more potent than the sum of its parts—Michael is self-aware enough to admit that she has always found Philippa attractive, but it extends beyond any simple attraction, beyond even her respect and affection. She now looks at Philippa the same way she looks at star-births and star-deaths, almost afraid of looking too long or too closely._

_And as for Philippa—Michael’s desires must surely be coloring her perception of reality, because she sometimes turns and sees Philippa looking back at her the same way._

_The captain is staring at her now, her eyes intently fixed even as she lets her hand fall away from Michael’s face. “Every time that happens,” she says, “every time you are in danger, I will wish again that it had not come to be.”_

_Michael suddenly bursts out laughing. Philippa blinks at her, visibly caught between being startled and concerned, and Michael marvels. It is cold enough for her fingers to feel numb through her gloves, and they are trapped in a collapsed tunnel, and the glory of Philippa is still undiminished to her._

_“I'm fine, I'm fine, I didn't hit my head or anything,” Michael reassures her. “It's just that this all seems—well, remarkably cliched.”_

_Philippa tilts her head in consideration, pursing her lips, and then she rolls her eyes. “What, two lonely ‘Fleet officers stuck on an ice planet? Oh, I don't know, I wouldn't mind seeing another straight-to-PADD holofilm about it. I rather hope we can skip the cave sex, though, that part always seemed slightly unsanitary to me, and gratuitous, given the constraints of time and resources.”_

_The moment the words leave her lips, Philippa immediately stiffens, working her jaw in silence. “I apologize, Number One. That was highly inappropriate.”_

_“There’s no need to apologize, Philippa.” Michael clears her throat and glances at the other woman. “Though I must say, you seem very familiar with this particular genre.”_

_Philippa's shoulders relax at Michael's teasing. “I need something to entertain me in my downtime.”_

_“Is living the plot of a holo not entertainment enough?” Michael prods at her cheek with her gloved fingers. She can feel the ache of a bruise sinking in._

_Philippa is quiet then, and the silence in the chamber is punctuated only by the faint sound of dripping water. Michael opens up the emergency heating blankets and settles in for a long wait, rubbing at her arms. It is remarkably chilly in the tunnel. She clears her throat, debating the least suggestive way of phrasing her request. “Would you be averse to sharing a blanket?” Michael asks at last. “The temperatures in here are likely to become only more uncomfortable.”_

_Philippa smiles faintly. “I would not be averse at all.”_

_Michael lifts up a corner of the foil blanket swaddled about her. Philippa slides close and then hugs Michael so tightly that she can nearly feel her bones creak beneath her layers of protective clothing. “Please don't do that again, Number One,” Philippa whispers into the shell of her ear. Her lips are slightly chapped, and her breath is heated, and Michael is suddenly warm all over. The captain does not mention the rock fall, does not mention Michael throwing herself in front of Philippa and pushing the other woman out of the way, does not mention their current desperate closeness, but Michael is all too aware of what is not said. “You could have died. You could have died, Michael. Please don't do that again.”_

_“I can't promise you that.” Michael turns and tentatively wraps her arms around Philippa's shoulders. “You know that.”_

_“I know,” Philippa says, “but I still have to ask.”_


	2. Equivalencies

“Here, drink this.” 

Michael presses a glass of herbal tea into Philippa’s hand. She takes a few sips from her own glass, washing the grittiness from her throat. The tea is faintly bitter and fragrant, tasting of flowers grown in iron-rich sand.

Philippa smiles up at her from a chair in a nook of the guest room Amanda had shown to them. Slicked strands of hair cling bedraggedly to her temples. “Thank you, Michael,” she says, draining the glass and then pressing it to her cheek. Her eyes close in relief. “You—were certainly not kidding about the heat here.”

“It’s the strain of the gravity and the thinner atmosphere, too.” Michael sits down on the armrest of Philippa’s chair and lightly rests her chin on top of Philippa’s head. “Even Starfleet captains are subject to gravity.”

“Too hot,” Philippa grumbles, nudging at Michael’s side with her free arm. She is still holding the glass to her face with her other hand.

Michael grins and kisses Philippa on the temple before getting to her feet. She walks around their room, unpacking the few articles of clothing they had brought from their bags and learning the shape of the space. The room is a near-exact replica of her room when she was a teenager on Vulcan, close enough to be familiar and foreign enough to be disconcerting all at once. The plaster and paint on the walls are fresh and unchipped, covering the rock surface in unblemished shades of pale gold and peach. The light sconces are untouched by dust, the corners of the walls lacking the scuff marks and wear expected from a space well-lived. There had been a huge chip in the paint on one of her walls, from her older brother knocking over a metal vase in his exuberance. She traces the half-remembered edges of the broken stone into the unmarked surface next to the door, picks up the vase on the table there and turns it over, looking for a dent in the shiny base and finding instead an artist’s tag which declares that the vase was made by T’Kaya just three months past. Michael scrapes it off with the edge of her nail and crumples it between her fingers, walking into the restroom to toss the scrap into the waste.

“Well? Is it as you remember?” Philippa asks. She has left from her chair and is now standing at the window, resting her elbows on the shaded portion of the ledge.

“Sarek and Amanda rebuilt this wing just last year,” Michael calls over her shoulder. She runs her fingers over the handles of the faucets—familiar in shape, but too shiny and burnished—before going to the replicator and punching in the code for two more glasses of cooled tea. “We’re probably the first people to stay in this room.”

“This house is enormous. How big is your family on Vulcan?”

Michael pauses with her glass half-raised to her lips. “That is—a complicated question,” she mutters. She walks over to the window and leans back against the ledge, handing Philippa the other drink. “These rooms aren't for family; they're for visiting dignitaries and ambassadors who, for one reason or another, don’t want to stay at their embassies. Sarek’s extended family is fairly large and prominent, but our immediate family is—small. Much smaller than yours. It ranges from three to five, depending on who you ask at any given time.”

Philippa raises an eyebrow. “I see,” she says, and her voice is so thoroughly skeptical that Michael cannot help but smile.

“My older brother is technically not allowed on-planet anymore. My younger brother currently refuses to acknowledge any relationship with our father, even though they are staying under the same roof for the summer.”

“I remember you saying something about that.”

“You know, he didn’t even protest too much when I accused him of eagerness when he asked to meet you. Apparently, you are highly admired at the Academy. They use you as a main focus in the Command-specific third year tactics class.”

Philippa blinks at that. “I—see,” she says again after a long moment.

Michael laughs then, and reaches out to run her fingers over the little furrows of bemusement between Philippa’s brows, which smooth out under her touch. Her skin is warm, flushed and vibrant in the way only living things are, and her face is filled with markers of life, creases around her eyes and mouth which deepen with her every expression. The light coming through the window tangles in her hair and renders the curls richly burgundy, and Michael spares a quick glance at the opened window before leaning in and kissing her, tasting faint salt overlaid with the bitterness of the tea. Philippa’s exhalations are steady against her cheek, coming only a little quicker than her normal breathing rate.

“You’ve—ah, adjusted very quickly to the environment here,” Michael says when they part, and they are still close enough that her lips brush against the corner of Philippa’s mouth with every word. 

A snort of laughter escapes from Philippa, and Michael can feel it in her own chest. “Why thank you, Michael,” Philippa says, and her tone is dry, but her eyes are still smiling.

The garden beneath them is small but lush, the dense flora positioned in such a way that the space seems almost wild, belying the calculation which had gone into the layout of the beds. It seems to be the part of the house which changed the least in the intervening years. She had been struck most by the plants when she first came to Sarek’s home; a red sky and a red earth were somehow more knowable to her than red and purple vegetation. It was startling, that she was to live under a red sky; it was nothing short of incomprehensible that she was to live on a planet where the fundamental molecular structure of chlorophyll had been altered so drastically that it no longer presented a verdant green—that she was to live where the word _greenery_ had no meaning.

In her first months on Vulcan, Amanda lead her out into the garden during the late evenings after her classes and let her sit quietly on the bench in the corner as she weeded the beds, and she told her things about the plants in front of her. Michael learned that the pith of the _gespar_ fruit was used in soaps and compotes, and that the flesh inside the rind was segmented like a citrus, but tasted like raspberries and tamarind. The purple plants with feathery leaves and thick crimson stalks were called the same word as Earth mint but had the flavor of burnt cinnamon and salty brine. The _favinit_ flowers bloomed during the hottest months, when even the leaves on the _gespar_ wilted at midday, and their pearly centers smelled of musk and sweet soil. The lower third of walls enclosing the garden was covered in _nah’ru_ vines, spindly and curling, and they grew where nothing else would. Amanda had been trying to keep them from climbing up to the higher stories of the house when Michael approached her for the first time, cautiously wrapping her fingers around the vine Amanda was pulling down and tugging in time with her. Amanda smiled down at her, and the vine clung to the surface of the rock and refused to budge, and Michael was soon yanking with all her might and laughing, marvelling at the tenacity of living things.

There is already a tendril of a _nah’ru_ vine winding up over the newly built ledge of the guest room, cracking the fresh paint and creating crevices in the rock to which it can cling. They turn back to the room to prepare for dinner, and when Michael picks up their empty glasses, a faint smile pulls at the corners of her mouth when she sees the rings of perspiration left behind by the chilled glasses on the surface of the stone, scant but undeniable reminders of their presence there.

\-----

_[First officer’s log, Stardate 429.19, Standard Earth Date 2252.192. The Shenzhou is currently in orbit above Meridiei V, analyzing the unprecedented ion storms in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. The science department estimates that the surveying mission will take approximately 1.5 standard days. The rest of the crew has taken this as an opportunity for downtime…]_

_“If you would do me the honor of accompanying me, Commander Burnham?” Philippa asks, offering Michael her arm._

_Michael grins at Philippa's exuberant formality. “Of course, Captain Georgiou.” She tucks her hand into the crook of Philippa's elbow for a few paces. “But whither am I accompanying you?”_

_“You'll see. It’s a surprise.”_

_The captain and Michael have adopted the habit of scheduling time to eat their lunches together once every few days, wandering around the Shenzhou until they find an empty observation room so that they could eat while looking out at space. At first, they focused on ship talk, but Michael was soon finding herself engrossed in Philippa’s every animated gesture as the captain declared her preference for French toast and her distaste for carrots and reminisced about her adolescent years, revealing those vital little things which no Starfleet profile can convey. Michael learned of the woman before her avidly, eagerly, and from there it seemed only fitting for her to tell stories in turn, to talk about the parts of her childhood on Doctari Alpha and Vulcan which were elided in her official file. Perhaps it should feel strange, to talk with her captain about those hidden places—_

_—but it never does. Philippa always listens to her with unabashed curiosity, whether she is describing the research projects at the VSA or the taste of the spun-sugar candies from the street fairs at the outpost. It is never strange, only intimate, with them sitting so close that Michael can see the reflections of warp trails arcing through the warm dark of Philippa’s eyes. Michael has never understood the laws of gravity as well as when she sits in front of Philippa and feels herself falling._

_Today, the captain leads Michael to one of the simulation rooms used for combat training. Philippa takes a holo chip from her pocket. “I managed to get my hands on one of the all-terrain chips in beta.” She opens the door and turns on the sim controls, taking out the Romulan bird-of-prey combat program and inserting the new chip. Michael steps inside behind her, walking over to the small table set for two in the middle of the gray room. There is freshly replicated bread and a small dish of herbed oil for dipping, and she can smell the aromas of basil and tomato wafting out from under the covered plates. She had told Philippa during their shift that she had a fondness for pasta._

_Michael has long ceased questioning how she would describe such a setting populated with other bodies, with another commander and her captain. It's never strange between them. Only—intimate._

_Philippa announces from behind her, “I give you—let’s see—NGC 6611, known colloquially as the Eagle Nebula.”_

_The projection system whirrs to life around them, and the room is plunged into pitch-black before stars begin to bloom in pinpricks of light suspended all around them, and then the colors of the nebula unfurl in wisps of gauzy light, curling through the dark like luminescent ink. Michael gasps, reaching out with gentle hands to cup a glittering cluster of stars. The soft light trickles out between her fingers as if from a lantern._

_“This is beautiful,” she breathes, walking over to where Philippa stands. “The spatial rendering—it’s flawless. Can it do small-scale textures?”_

_“Let’s try someplace sandy, then.” The light from the stars reflects off the edge of Philippa’s smile, and she types something into the controls. The room is suddenly light, black fading into a bright, open blue, and there is sand beneath their feet and water wide in front of them, spreading out as far as the eye can see. “Pulau Langkawi,” she says, and her voice is distant. “I spent a lot of time on this beach, when I was younger.”_

_Michael crouches down and takes up a handful of sand, rubbing her fingers in the almost-grit of the texture. It trickles down her fingers, nearly solid, before melting into nothingness. “How good is the reconstruction?”_

_Philippa walks out into the surf, her gaze fixed on the ebb and flow of the water around her ankles. “It is close. Very close, but the closeness only emphasizes the inaccuracies. The people are missing.” She bends down and trails her fingertips over the surface of the ocean, laughing in something close to bemusement when she lifts her fingers up and finds them dry. “I don’t think I would stay here if I could—the ocean should at least make your clothes wet.” She turns back to Michael. “Where do you want to eat lunch, Number One?”_

_Michael goes to the controls and pulls up the list of Delta quadrant options. “What about this—have you been to the northern continent of Hyxini Teon IV? It’s an uninhabited moon, with fluorite mountains and silica plains.”_

_“No, but it sounds gorgeous.”_

_Michael taps on the option, and the sky darkens to a saturated emerald green streaked with aquamarine clouds, and they are standing on a polished sheet of sleek silvered stone. Behind them, crystalline crags bite into the horizon in every shade of purple and green. “Shall we, Captain?”_

_“Certainly—”_

_Philippa trails off as the floor underneath them groans. The sky and mountains fizzle out, vanishing in ribbons of sparks and leaving behind the matte gray walls of the sim room. Michael barely has the time to reach out and grab the edge of one of the ribbed wall supports before there is an odd swooping sensation in her stomach. Her boots leave from the ground entirely as the artificial gravity of the ship suddenly vanishes._

_The klaxons of the ship-wide alert blare in unison with the sound of both of their communicators going off simultaneously. Michael unclips her comm from her belt. “Burnham here.”_

_“The emission increase in the ion storms is interfering with the gravity emitters, Commander. Engineering says they should get them stabilized within two, maybe three hours. They want you down to look at the quantum orientation systems to make sure that there’s no permanent damage. The captain isn’t answering her comm—”_

_Michael looks over at Philippa, who is squeezing her eyes tightly shut as she clings to one of the rails, a distinct green cast to her face. She remembers how Philippa had barely made it through to the spacedeck the last time they had to go out into zero-grav. “Is her presence needed for anything?”_

_“No, Commander, but she still needs to know the situation.”_

_“I’ll relay the information to her. Tell Engineering to expect me down in ten minutes. Burnham out.”_

_She ends the comm and pushes off the wall, batting aside the plate of pasta drifting across her path and floating over to Philippa. The captain is breathing harshly through her nose as she stares off her nausea. Michael reaches out and rubs her back for a few moments. “Engineering says that the emitters should be fixed in a couple hours,” she tells Philippa. “I’m going to swing by Medical and grab an anti-vertigo hypo for you.”_

_“The ultimate difference between Langkawi and here,” Philippa says through gritted teeth, “is that gravity never changes on a beach. I’ve been dealing with space-sickness since the Academy, Michael. I’ll—survive.”_

_“I’ll get a couple for the engineering crew, too. Don’t worry, no one will know that you need them.” On a sudden impulse, Michael brushes her hand against Philippa’s cheek before maneuvering her way to the front of the room. She kicks back, finding purchase on the wall and pushing herself through the doorway and calling over her shoulder, “Hang in there, Philippa—”_

\-----

“Did you make this?” Philippa asks, reaching for more of the _gespar_ compote. “It's utterly delicious.”

The dinner for their first night on Vulcan is progressing better than the majority of first contact missions, though first contact is perhaps an incorrect term for Philippa’s meeting with Michael’s family on Vulcan, all of whom already know of her. Philippa is nevertheless treating it with the full diplomatic strategy prerequisite for such a mission. Though the captain might not be wearing her full insignia and declaring that _we come in peace_ , Michael can recognize the set of her shoulders, the slight pause before she gives her light but not unthoughtful answers. She wonders if her younger self would ever believe that she would one day know another woman so well that she could spin meaning from the subtle differences between the variants of her laugh, between the degrees of inflection hidden in her most mundane words.

Amanda pushes the jar of compote in Philippa’s direction. “I'm glad you like it. Sarek and I make it at the end of every year,” she says, glancing at her husband, who is sitting next to her at the dinner table. The table itself had been designed with state dinners in mind, so their small group only fills a fraction of the seats. “It's one of Michael's favorites.”

Michael nods, neatly finishing off the last bite of her roll and dusting the crumbs off of her fingers. “It simply doesn't taste the same coming from a replicator.”

“There is no quantifiable difference between replicated comestibles and those from more traditional sources, Michael,” declares a voice three seats removed from the main group.

Michael points the flat triangle of wood—the Vulcan equivalent of a butterknife—in her younger brother's direction. “I will be most impressed if you can still say that after you have spent the better part of four years on replicated comestibles.”

“I consumed replicated food for the duration of my stationing on the Cybele and found it perfectly adequate.”

“That was barely a month—”

“—1.14 months—”

“—and Captain Okamoto has one of the best tinkerers in the 'Fleet, she spoils her crew—”

“My treatment on the Cybele was in no way preferential—”

“They have been arguing over this for ten years,” Michael hears Amanda confiding to Philippa. “Spock once tried to reprogram one of the replicators to make food good enough to fool her, and everything was fuschia and tasted like overripe eggplant for two weeks.”

Michael flushes slightly. Spock pauses mid-word. “Mother, please,” he says stiffly.

“Trying to deny a factual occurrence is the height of illogic,” Amanda says. She waves her fingers at them. “Carry on.”

There is an ease to the rhythm of Michael’s argument with her brother, even though this is her first time speaking face-to-face with him in almost a year. Michael knows what he will say, just as he can likely anticipate her points with ease. The measured cadence of their voices in tandem is known to her ear, as familiar as the taste of sweet compote atop flaky rolls made from a combination of Earth wheat and _yartik_. Michael helps herself to another piece, caught between being lulled by the easiness of the conversation and being jarred by that same ease.

It seems to Michael as though she were being unmoored from time. The red-tinged breeze blowing in through the opened bay windows, the taste of jam and dessert bread tempering the near-metal bite of the air, her brother’s serious tone as he meticulously picks off the thin crust from the rolls before eating them—it is as though she is sixteen again and convincing her parents of the merits of a new PADD model, or twenty-one and trying her best to temper the pride in her voice as she announces her class standing in the VSA, or twenty-three and sitting ramrod-straight, biting out her words to keep from showing her fear that she would never be enough.

And yet it cannot be any of those times. It cannot be any time except now, because the long table was installed after Michael left for the Shenzhou, and such fears no longer cross her mind with frequency, and Philippa is next to her, recounting her attempt to program a replicator to make _pisang goreng_ which backfired horribly. Their feet are touching beneath the table, ankle to ankle, and Michael lightly nudges Philippa with her elbow and rolls her eyes whenever a part of her anecdote veers far enough from believability to draw laughter from Amanda. It cannot be any time except now, because Sarek is sitting in front of them, yet Spock still dares to go so far as to argue over a pointless, petty issue, and Michael ventures even to smile.

After Philippa finishes her story, Sarek intones, “I admire you, Captain, for going to such perilous lengths for the sake of accuracy.”

There is a second of silence. Michael’s eyes widen as she stares at him, and her eyebrows rise to what feels like her hairline. She covers her mouth with her hand as she meets Amanda’s twinkling eyes, and the laughter breaks out of Amanda and Philippa at the same time, brash and booming. Michael manages to hide her grin, and while the two other women muffle their laughs in their hands, she looks at her father and sees his face relaxed in what had the potential to be called contentment. She cannot remember having ever ascribed such a state to him when she was younger.

“Thank you, Ambassador,” Philippa says at last. “I do strive for accuracy whenever possible.”

Sarek inclines his head. “Then perhaps you would not find it overly onerous to review with us some of the proceedings on the Shenzhou. For accuracy's sake.”

“Those involving Michael’s welfare, I presume?” Philippa raises an eyebrow. “I can also pull up an annotated copy of the Starfleet regulations regarding interpersonal relationships on my PADD—”

“Philippa, please don’t,” Michael mutters, lightly kicking at her foot under the table.

“—along with copies of all our mission reports too, if you want.”

“That would be most agreeable. Amanda has informed me of an Earth custom called a ‘shovel talk,’” Sarek says, clasping his hands serenely on the table. “And an—”

“ _Sarek_ ,” Michael hisses.

“—accompanying ‘interrogation,’” he continues, undeterred. Michael inwardly curses the dancing glint in his eyes. “These apparently fall under our purview as Michael’s parental figures, and I am of course prepared to fulfill my duties to the utmost of my abilities.”

Michael settles into her seat and swivels to look at Philippa, then Sarek with her blankest expression. There is a barely audible snicker from her brother's direction. The place has changed, she thinks as they begin to talk. They have changed, too. The house is smaller than it once was to her, though it has physically grown in size, and she has grown too, learned more of shape of herself against the backgrounds of far away places. It is no longer the same place, and they are no longer the same people, and it is only through those differences that she realizes that what stretches between them, the threads of resentment and pride and stubborn, stubborn affection—that is what remains a constant. 

\-----

_[First officer’s log, Stardate 474.15, Standard Earth Date 2252.273. Following our three-week-long sojourn in the Minos Korva system escorting ambassadors between the inhabited planets and overseeing geological surveys, the Shenzhou has been scheduled for a short shore leave on Epsilon Ceti III, also known as Risa. All senior officers have been assigned to staggered slots of leave, with Commander Saru staying onboard for the entire duration of the period, as per his request. The captain and I are on planet for the final two days, along with Lieutenants Detmer and Owosekun, and Lieutenant Commander García...]_

_“Captain?” Owosekun blurts, her voice high with disbelief._

_“Commander Burnham?” Detmer asks in the same tone. Michael takes a step towards them, and she yells, “Don't touch it! Don't touch it, it spreads the moment you touch it.”_

_Philippa's mouth is set in a grim line as she takes in the scene. “Michael, find something to slow down the growth of the organism,” she says. The force of command in her voice is unmistakable, and Michael nods in acknowledgement. “I'll go tell the owner to evacuate the club in case it spreads to the upper stories.” Philippa runs up the stairs leading to the main kitchen, the thin tulle of her skirt trailing behind her._

_Michael rummages through the shelves in front of her. It's definitely organic. It looks vegetal—no, fungal. She wishes she had thought to bring along her blaster—but who brings a blaster down to shore leave? Who beams down to leave expecting to find two of their main bridge crew immobilized and stuck to a wall in a dark basement, covered in a rapidly spreading, sickly green fungal growth? A blaster probably wouldn't even be effective, given its visible growth and regeneration rate. They need a fungicide, something with a high concentration of sulfur, or iprodione—iprodione would be best—_

_“Commander, I—I think it's doing something to my legs—”_

_It's carnivorous. Of course the fungus is carnivorous. “What were you two even doing down here?” Michael asks. Iprodione is toxic to the majority of carbon-based organisms but functions like glucose in the cuisines of silicon-based life forms, manifesting analogously to starches and sugar—do the clubs in this district cater to Hirogens or Pakled?_

_“Keyla’s implant was glitching, so she needed to go someplace less crowded to calibrate it. I wanted a break from the noise, so I went with her.” Owosekun’s voice is strained but steady. “How about you, Commander?”_

_“The captain and I were in the restaurant next door and heard your shouting.” No, that's Denobulan cheese—no, that's powdered blood—no, that’s Betazed chocolate—_

_“It's a sub basement, Commander,” Detmer says, hissing through her teeth. “With all respect, the only way you—dammit, it's starting to hurt—the only way you could've heard us is if you're on either side, and there aren't any—shit!—any restaurants this deep down, only bathrooms and other—and other sub basements—”_

_“Found it!” Michael exclaims, snatching up a flat package with Pakled script on the front and tearing it open. She rushes over and starts sprinkling the blue-gray powder over the faintly pulsating surface of the fungus. “I don't know what this is, but all of the edible plants on the Pakled homeworld contain high amounts of iprodione, and they're an entirely vegetarian culture. It likely won't terminate the growth, but it should slow it down to give us more time.”_

_The green of the organism is already dulling, and Michael breathes out a sigh of relief. Philippa rushes back into the basement, Commander García and a tall Tellarite in tow._

_García recoils, her hands falling to her hip and scrabbling for an absent phaser. “Keyla, Jo, what—”_

_“Itzel, it's a long story—no, don’t touch it!”_

_“I thought you two left to hook up, what the hell?”_

_Philippa turns to the Tellarite, who looks aghast. “Have you ever encountered anything like this before?”_

_“No, no, not at all! It must have escaped from next door, seeped through the walls; they run a brisk trade in rare foodstuffs, you see, and this is their special week for macro-edibles, it has to be one of theirs—”_

_“Foodstuffs? We're the ones being eaten over here—”_

_“Will they know how to control it?” Michael asks._

_“Undoubtedly, but, ah, they’re closed today—”_

_Philippa groans through her teeth. Michael glances around the storeroom again, taking stock of the multiple sacks of powdered ice spiders and dried fly pupae, and looks back at Detmer and Owosekun. She silently apologizes to the both of them. “You have a lot of Berellian patrons here, right?” she asks the club owner._

_The Tellarite nods, nervously fidgeting with their hands. “Yes, yes we do, we’re one of the few places in the district to import their wine—completely legally, I assure you—”_

_Michael cuts them off. “Do you have any live Berellian beetles?”_

_Four hours later, the club owner is plying them with drinks and praising them for feeding the stock of beetles so well as Detmer carefully picks the last of the sixteen-legged pillbugs from Owosekun’s clothes and Michael brushes the final remnants of the fungus from Detmer's hair into an empty jar to bring back to the Shenzhou for testing. García is checking the edges of the room for any remaining fungal growth while Philippa reassures the club owner that their establishment will not be closed._

_“And that's the last one,” Detmer declares to the room at large. She puts down her tweezers and seals the wriggling bag of beetles, setting it as far away from her as possible, before picking up two shots of Saurian brandy and downing them in quick succession._

_“You did good, Kay,” Owosekun murmurs, wrapping her arm around Detmer’s waist. Detmer flops over, hiding her face in Owosekun’s hair. “Real good.”_

_“I hate bugs._ I hate bugs _. I hate them,” Detmer’s voice is muffled._

_Owosekun glances up at Michael. “Thanks for saving our asses, Commander,” she says as she strokes Detmer’s back in slow, comforting circles. “Hell of a date night, huh?”_

_Michael shakes her head and laughs, picking up one of the shot glasses as she debates if there is even any evidence substantive enough to refute the lieutenant’s casual comment. “After all that,” she says at last, “I think you can probably call me Michael.”_

_“Sure thing, Commander,” Owosekun says. The lieutenant is grinning, and Michael realizes that the title is different now, the enunciation of the syllables less rigid and distant, and she can hear within them the echo of her name._

_Philippa comes up behind her and reaches for a drink, brushing her arm against Michael's side. “Saru commed me,” she announces. “We beam back to the ship in fifteen. Shore leave is being cut a little short, since we've been assigned with delivering water filtration equipment to settlements in the neutral zone.”_

_Michael stifles her groan and takes another shot._

_They drink and lean against each other, hip to hip—as close as always, but their stances are too casual for a captain and a commander, and the air between them is too charged for their relationship to be only platonic. A change in definitions is necessary, Michael knows, but tonight was likely their last opportunity for a while, to give voice to what is welling up between them. Their schedules are going to be tight for the next month, as such a mission allows for scant time to talk in a personal capacity—much to her regret, because right before they heard the shouting from next door, Michael had been leaning in close, and Philippa was on the verge of speaking, and Michael half-imagined then that she could already taste her words, the heady potential on her tongue._

_Hell of a date night, indeed._


	3. Momentum

“The introduction of the six additional strings allowed for the octave to be structured around quarter-intervals, which is the basis for all music composed on the modern _lai'uhr_ ,” Spock is saying, his eyes fixed on the restored late dynastic lyre. He has bent down so close to the display that his nose almost touches the surface of the glass. “The solid wood body of this specimen means that it would be less resonant than earlier models, which were built with hollow soundboxes covered in hide. The construction of this instrument was likely more a gesture of pacifism than a decision based on acoustics, and these were built four millennia before the time of Surak. Fascinating.”

Philippa is also looking closely at the lyre, the illumination from the display case reflected like firelight in her eyes. “Earth instruments used animal products up through the 22nd century,” she says. “I think we still have a violin with catgut strings somewhere in the family—my grandmother swore that the sound was more mellow that way.”

Her brother turns around, and the movement nearly knocks him into the case. “Do you play, Captain?”

“Try not to set off any alarms now,” Michael murmurs.

He sends her a quelling look, clasping his hands firmly behind his back. Philippa ducks her head to hide her smile. “I can play a little violin, yes, but it was never my strong point. I’ve always preferred dancing. For much of my childhood, I trained in classical ballet.”

“Dance is also a most aesthetic practice,” he says, and he nods once before turning to the next case, scanning the description and frowning slightly at the placard’s interpretation of the artifact in question.

The room is high-ceilinged and cool, illuminated along the walls in subtle shades of sepia and gold. Museum patrons mill about, their robed forms blurred in the dim lighting as they move from display to display, looking at the instruments in the glass cases. This is the first time the twenty-odd newly restored ancient lyres have been put on display for public viewing, and ShiKahr Academy has partnered with the archaeology department at the VSA to present them alongside religious engravings, household objects, and illuminated manuscripts from the dynastic period of the southern continent. Such an exhibition on ancient Vulcan material culture was unprecedented in recent memory; Spock had told her and Philippa about it after Amanda and Sarek retired, and there had been no way to mistake his suggestion of a trip to the museum as anything other than eager.

“You two are close, aren’t you?” Philippa asks Michael, her voice low and fond. 

“We became close,” Michael says. She leans down to look more closely at one of the lyres, her eyes lingering on the fine filigree of precious metal running across the yoke of the instrument. Cracks spider across the surface of the metalwork, breaking the stylized flowers and vines into pieces smaller than her fingernail. She wonders how long it took them to piece together all the fragments into a fragile whole—hours upon hours, at least, of undoubtedly slow and arduous work. “Once we started saying more than a few words to each other at a time, we argued constantly. We would always stick up for one another with other people, I never doubted that, but when we were at home, we never stopped arguing. He was so serious, even when he was a little toddler.”

“And you are one to be accusing others of seriousness, I see.”

Michael glances at Philippa over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. Despite that, she holds out two fingers behind her back and grins when Philippa brushes against them. “If I were less serious, we might have argued less.” She pauses. “We’d also probably be less close.”

“He is much like you,” Philippa says.

“Reserved? Stoic? A pedant?”

Philippa snorts. “I was going to say ‘enthusiastic,’ but I cede to your superior knowledge.”

“We became even closer, after I left.” Michael moves to the next display, looking over at the inlaid stones in the shoulder of the lyre. Next to it is a piece of stone the size of her hand, covered in crooked lines of proto-Golic script. The description contains modern Golic and Standard translations of the text, which is a fragment from an epic describing the life of the goddess of the desert, praising the sands which poured from her mouth along with her vital red breath. “He told me he applied to Starfleet before he told our parents.”

“My younger sister and I were the much same way. I talked to Lev more when I got to space than I ever did when I was home.” Philippa shakes her head, laughing under her breath. “Not that it was easy at first, mind you, the talking. There were months when we commed each other once a week like clockwork, just to yell about what the other did wrong.”

Michael’s eyes land on the entryway to the exhibit. The panel next to the doorway describes the culture of the dynastic period as _rich and dynamic, fully as complex as any contemporary culture. There is a tendency even among scholarly communities to characterize the seven thousand millennia of historical time before the Time of Awakening as an unbroken swath of savagery, but this notion cannot be supported on archaeological or anthropological grounds..._

For all of their adherence to logic, Michael thinks, Vulcan purveyors of history are fond of euphemism. All of their periods of history are neatly demarcated with lofty names—the Time Before Time, the Time of Awakening, the Time of Reform. Each of these names suggests a _before_ and an _after_ framing some great catalyst, belying the complexity on either side of the moment of revolution. Perhaps that is a feature of historical time, to carve out clear eras marked by watershed events and grandiose names and places, to erase the slow and arduous work of change which exists in every time and place. There are no memorials built for the shifts of meaning within a moment, the decisions made for small and mundane actions, the gradual realizations built quietly over the course of years, the little things which build and build, like streams running downhill, until they converge, ferocious and unstoppable.

Philippa is looking down at a star chart etched in brazen metal, her lips moving silently as she sounds out the names of ancient constellations, and Michael wonders then why any memorials are ever built, if this moment could not be deemed worthy of one.

“Do you recognize any of these, Number One?”

Michael straightens at the sound of Philippa’s voice and goes over to look at the chart with her. “Assuming that the coordinates are scaled accurately, give me half an hour to calculate stellar drift and axial motion and cross-check the results with current astronomical objects, and I will.” She looks down at the faint lines scratched between the dots, drawing out the celestial skeletons of mythical creatures. “At least four of these stars have gone nova. I would not recommend using this chart as a basis for navigation, but it’s your decision, captain.”

Philippa huffs out a laugh. “Do you have a favorite constellation, Michael?”

Michael considers her answer. “From Doctari Alpha, it was Solkar’s Ship. From Earth, Cassiopeia. From Vulcan, the Anvil and Hammer. They all contain some of the same stars.” She taps the glass over the ancient equivalent of the Anvil. “How about you, Philippa?”

“Scorpio—I looked up vintage zodiac tables once, and it’s apparently my birth sign. And my first station as an ensign was three months in the Antares system there.”

Michael skims her fingertips over the glass, tracing over the shapes created by the stars—the heavenly lyre, the creator of sandstorms, the fruit bearer, the warrior with her _lirpa_ , the lightning urn. It is a sky separated from hers by thousands of years, but it is still the same expanse of light and dark which goes ever onwards. There might now be mission logs and holocharts instead of tales of sand crabs and stone dragons, but time has done little to alter how they look at the sky. They still spin stories of the black. They still draw pictures across the infinite stretches of space and fill out the dark places between the stars with hopeful words, staring out into black with yearning for that which they do not know. 

\-----

_[First officer’s log, Stardate 494.68, Standard Earth Date 2252.310. The Shenzhou is responding to a distress call from a scientific settlement on Erixana IV, a class M moon. Gravitational disturbances caused by asteroids in the orbital pattern of the moon have led to a sudden increase in the moon's tectonic activity, and the volcanic system nearest to the settlement is on the verge of eruption. As of this time, there is an estimated four hours before the settlement is completely destroyed, and the instability of the landscape, coupled with the emissions from the volcano, makes it impossible for the ship’s transporters to lock onto the settlers remotely and beam them up to the ship. All of the Shenzhou’s crew are beaming down in rotations with transporter activation beacons to evacuate the settlers in small groups. The captain and I are currently preparing to go on-planet and organize the evacuations for the main compound. The Vyasa and the Sayona have also received the distress call, and they are set to arrive at the site within two hours...]_

_“Captain, we need to beam out now!” Michael shouts._

_“We can’t,” Philippa calls back from the front of the group._

_“The building is about to collapse!”_

_“The beacon won't activate in here; we need to get out first—”_

_The air is hot and thick with ash. It sears her throat with her every breath. Michael brings up the end of their little group, half-supporting the weight of one of the scientists as they hurry out of the research labs. She can see Philippa ahead of her, half-lost in the smoke._

_The volcano is already erupting. The estimates provided by the settlement were perilously inaccurate—they don't have four hours; they likely only have around an hour left before the air is completely unbreathable, and the seismic activity caused by the eruption is making the building collapse around them. The floor shakes beneath their feet as they veer around the falling debris. Michael can hear the metal supports of the upper story groaning. From the corner of her eye she catches sight of the plaster ceiling cracking, and she sees Philippa in front of her, already out the door and activating the beacon, and the scientists are turning to light, and she shoves the woman she’s supporting forwards and screams, “Run! Philippa, run, run—”_

_—there is a white shattering pain at the back of her head, and everything goes black—_

_-_

_“Welcome back, Commander Burnham.”_

_Michael opens her eyes to the familiar bright walls of the medical bay. Dr. Nambue is next to her bedside. “You were out for six hours after you were struck unconscious during the evacuation of Erixana IV. We're still in orbit around the moon. All members of the settlement were evacuated safely.”_

_“Philippa? The captain?” she asks, her throat rasping. “Is she safe? Is Philippa—” she breaks off when she sees Nambue glance downwards. “No,” she breathes. “No, please, no—”_

_“The captain in critical care right now, Commander. For the time being, she is alive, but we—we don't know if she'll make it.”_

_“What—” she licks her lips, unable to make sense of the doctor's words. “What happened?”_

_“You were struck unconscious in a zone where the transporter couldn't get a lock on you. The captain activated the transport beacon on herself and waited until the whole group of settlers had been beamed up to run into the impact zone and retrieve your body right as the building collapsed entirely. If it hadn’t been for her partial atomization in the transporter beam, she would have died instantly.”_

_Michael still doesn’t understand. “No—please, Doctor, she beamed up, no—”_

_Nambue’s voice is gentle. “She saved your life, Commander.”_

\-----

“We’re meeting Amanda at the embassy at 1600 hours, right?” Philippa asks as she brushes her hair out of her face. The heat of the day is already slicking the dark threads, making them cling to her temples.

“Yes. Hopefully, the data from the translator malfunctions during our mission in Delta Upsilon can help with her case.” Michael steers Philippa under an awning, out from under the harshest of the light.

The street stretches out before them, lined with shop entrances blooming with colors pale and luminous in the ruddy air. Signs sway in the light breeze, the pixelated holographic letters sharp against the old-fashioned wooden frames and slender chains attaching the signs to the lintel pieces. Their feet stir up lazy swirls of red sand from the cobblestones as they duck out of the heat into the entrances of whichever shops whose wares catch their eye—sleek decorative cases for communicators, furniture carved from fragrant wood and rugged stone, imported candies which smelled of trees and spices, filigree jewelry with minute details etched by laser so finely that the metal resembles lace. The trees planted in the small plots of land between the sidewalk and the main thoroughfare provide little respite from the heat. The sun striking through the branches turns their leaves translucent, shining gem-like and deep as rubies, and the dappled shadows they cast down lightly tease over the heads of passerby.

Michael has seen this street many times before, trodden on these cobblestones and shielded her face from this sun, but Philippa’s presence renders the present distinct and vivid, and somehow more precious. They enter a grocery store, and Philippa wanders through the cramped aisles, her eyes shining with delight at the sight of sour Vulcan desert pears stacked next to a basket filled with the shiny bruised-purple bead-like fruit of Rigellian mistletoe and a crate of Earth Arumanis mangoes. She picks up a mango and brings it to her nose, inhaling deeply. Her face softens as she hums at the scent, and Michael can’t breathe through her aching fondness. She thinks for a fleeting second of impossible things—of preserving this moment in crystal, or spinning it out into threads of gold.

“We should get something for your family,” Philippa says.

Michael agrees. She shows Philippa how to pick the ripest of desert pears, selecting the fruit with pale yellow stems and deep burgundy flesh, and the shop owner tells them about the uses of Rigellian mistletoe berries. They leave the shop with a neatly packed box of fruit, which Michael tucks under her arm as they venture back into the heat. 

She pauses mid-step and turns to Philippa abruptly. “I want to show you something.”

The campus is a short walk removed the grocery store, acres of cool russet grass and lush trees in the middle of the city. Uniformed students hurry down the carefully tended pathways between the class buildings, PADDs cradled in their arms. The main building stands in the middle of the campus, a monolith of polished pale stone. They walk past the quantum physics library where she spent sleepless nights on problem sets and the on-campus gymnasium which held the intramural sparring competition she nearly won. Philippa’s steps fall in time with her, and she laughs at the places in Michael’s anecdotes which were meant to draw laughter, chiming in with her own stories about sneaking around Starfleet Academy drunk and hacking into restricted zones with Katrina during their senior year just to prove that they could. As they pass by familiar places, Michael finds that her grip on the box of fruit is not as tight as it could have been.

“It’s smaller than I remember,” Michael says at last, and her voice sounds as though she had been holding and holding her breath, and just exhaled. 

Philippa smiles at her sidelong. “Such places often are.”

As with the lair of a creature under a child’s bed, as with the monsters imagined in the gloom of the night, Michael is glad to discover that she can tell a story of of this place now. She pushes open the door and sighs in relief at the cooler air within. “Welcome to the Vulcan Science Academy,” she announces, adjusting the weight of the box under her arm. 

Philippa walks over to one of the chairs lined against the wall and sits down heavily, fanning her face. Her legs are ever so slightly akimbo, her spine curved just so against the back of the chair, and Michael stills and stares at the impossible image. She can do that now, she realizes with a jolt—sit down and occupy more space than is ideal. She sinks down into the chair next to Philippa’s, and the padding squeaks beneath her weight.

“I haven’t been back here since I left for the Shenzhou,” Michael says. She looks down at the dun-colored chair cushion beneath her. “I used to see people nap on these seats all the time, during finals season.”

“Did they wake up with back problems?” Philippa asks, wincing exaggeratedly as she shifts in her seat.

“There is no way they didn’t regret it.” She leans back and rests her head on the top of the back of the chair. “One of my friends swore that she could make it through a week on only meditation, and she fell asleep in one of the chairs in the examination room, which are even worse than these—”

“Michael Burnham,” someone calls from her right.

Michael stands, turning towards the sound to see a short, stocky Vulcan woman extending her hand in the _ta’al_. Her hair is pinned back in glossy braids which coil around the crown of her head, interwoven with thin gold chains, and her lipstick is pearlescent white, striking against the dark olive of her skin. Michael lifts up her hand, mirroring the greeting gladly. “T’Sana, _kwal se tu, na’shaya_. How are you doing?”

“If you were not currently spreading libellous rumors about my person, I would be more than adequate.” Her voice is smooth and warm. “My team is currently in recess, so I thought it prudent to speak with you when I saw you here.”

“Libel implies falsehood paired with malicious intent, and you know well that I had neither in my statement. It’s fortunate you found us; I was going to comm you later today and see if we could meet while I'm here.” Michael turns towards the captain. “Philippa, this is D’Kvhn T’Mai T'Sana, one of my classmates from the Academy. T’Sana, this is Philippa Georgiou, my captain.”

“ _Na’shaya_ ,” Philippa says, inclining her head.

“Your—captain,” T’Sana repeats, lingering on the pause between the possessive and the title.

“Yes. My captain.” Michael raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“Ah. Your captain.” 

“Yes, her captain,” Philippa says in her driest tone.

T’Sana scrutinizes Philippa before she finally nods in acknowledgement. “It is pleasing to meet you in person, Captain. Michael talks about you often.”

“All good things, I hope,” Philippa says. “I am glad to meet any friend of Michael’s.”

The three women fall easily into conversation, sitting back down on the thin cushions of the chairs. After a few minutes spent talking about missions on the Shenzhou, Philippa turns to the Vulcan woman and asks, “What do you do at the VSA, T’Sana?”

“I am a member the Vulcan Expeditionary Group,” T’Sana responds. “We are currently in our study season, hence why we are convening at the Academy.”

“What’re your main projects now?” Michael asks. “I know you just finished the one on geophysical alignment in liquid-core moons.”

“The Group’s main project now is quantum analysis of bodies in warp travel. We are applying discrete methods to the processes of hyperdimensional travel—”

“—which would completely restructure Cochrane’s dimensional equivalences,” Michael finishes, “and revolutionize our understanding of warp systems.” The words are achingly familiar to her. 

“Our research is based on the models presented in your thesis on quantum movement and wormhole mechanics. It is your work as much as it is ours.” T’Sana’s is looking in Michael’s direction, but her eyes do not quite meet hers. 

Michael received the Legion of Honor for that thesis. It will soon be cited in an intersystem study sponsored by the VSA. And yet—and yet it still had not been enough. She thinks that there was a time, not long ago, when she would have been fiercely bitter upon hearing her friend's words. It took her months to realize that allowing herself to feel anger and rancor was not a crime worthy of constant self-censure, and even now, years removed from the event, she does not begrudge her bitterness to her past self.

“I wish you success in it,” Michael says, and she hopes that T’Sana knows that the sharp edge in her voice is far dulled from what it once was. 

“Are you content, Michael?” T’Sana asks suddenly.

There is a quality to her voice which might be contrition. Michael looks down at her clasped hands, and she hears the rustling of Philippa's clothing as she shifts closer, until their shoulders are almost touching.

T’Sana had come rushing up to the secluded bench where Michael was sitting after Sarek had delivered the news of her rejection, her eyes hot and flinty, the fingers of her right hand crushing the ribbon of the medal which signified her acceptance into the Vulcan Expeditionary Group. The sight of her classmate going so far so as to allow the satiny cream fabric of her graduation robes to drag on the ground startled Michael into attempting to say something, but before she could even find adequate words, T’Sana thrusted her medal into Michael's hand and started speaking, low and intent, and if she had been anyone else Michael would have called her furious—at the board of the VSA for their utter dereliction of any logic, at the directors of the Expeditionary Group for their irrational hypocrisy, at an academic culture which would allow for their fundamental principles to be violated so blatantly, so unjustly, so illogically, and surely no one in their class with a degree from the renowned Academy to their name, surely no one would have such a deficiency in judgement so as to comply with the decision, and she would resign her own spot in the group in protest if the board did not reconsider their ruling immediately—

And Michael had laughed then, because she could have never pictured such vitriol coming from her prim friend who read the studies from the Expeditionary Group as voraciously as her cousins on Mars read updates on holofilm actors, and even as she laughed she felt sick at the irrefutable proof pouring from her mouth of her emotionality, her unsuitability, and that made her laugh even more, for what else was there to do? She eventually stopped long enough to talk T’Sana down so that the viciousness in the other woman's eyes was no longer so sharp, and T’Sana sat with her on the bench until her mother and brother came to find her. Michael remembers that they had brought with them the sweet jam-glazed cakes which were meant to be celebratory treats following her induction. At Amanda's insistence, they shared the food between the four of them, and the sweetness slowly countered the bile in Michael’s throat.

“My contentment in the present does not abolish what I felt following my rejection from the Expeditionary Group,” Michael says, her words measured and firm. “Nor do the circumstances behind my assignation to the Shenzhou negate how I feel now. T’Sana, I—” she breaks off, and a faint rueful smile twists her lips. 

How easy it would be, to look at her life aboard the Shenzhou now, with Philippa and the crew and the space to smile without censure and the stars spilled before them innumerable as grains of salt, and say that it was for the better that she was rejected from the Expeditionary Group. How easy it would be, to brush aside the years she had spent tracing over her features in her mirror in hope that they would change, to forget all those weeks of curling up on her bed so far away from home and despising the vastness of space for want of something to blame other than herself.

How simple it would be, to call this the _after_. 

“I am content,” Michael says at last, lightly brushing her fingertips over the back of Philippa’s hand as she thinks of the years intervening between then and now, the months of coming to terms with the realization that she deserves to express anger and happiness and everything in between. “This does not mean that I am content with the past, but I am—I am most content with the life I live now. Do not worry, T’Sana.”

T’Sana nods slowly, the light shifting over her face with the motion and gentling the shadows around her mouth. “I am pleased to hear it.”

A notification on T’Sana’s comm beeps, and she clears her throat, rising to her feet. “Recess is over. It was fortuitous that we came across each other today, Michael, Captain. Would you be amenable to meeting again later in the week?”

“Yes, absolutely. Send me your schedule, I'll comm you about it.”

“I will do so at the next opportunity.” T'Sana briefly salutes them again, delivering the usual farewell before walking away, and Michael stares at her receding back for a moment before turning back to Philippa. She finds that she is eager to plan the rest of their afternoon.

\-----

_[Acting captain’s log, Stardate 496.36, Standard Earth Date 2252.313. Captain Georgiou has been released to her quarters, three days after regaining consciousness. She will resume active duty the day after tomorrow.]_

_Michael steps into Philippa’s quarters the moment the captain opens her door. Her hands are clasped tightly behind her back, and she does not waste time with any greeting. Her voice is cold as she says, “You cannot risk your life like that again, Captain.”_

_Philippa’s lips thin as she presses them together. Her face is still too pale. “It is not your place to tell me what I can and cannot do, Commander.”_

_“That is exactly my place,” Michael snaps. “I am responsible for your safety—”_

_“And I am responsible for the welfare of my crew, and for the continued survival of this ship—”_

_“And if this ship is your responsibility, as you claim it is, and if this crew is your responsibility, as you claim it is, you would not leave them here without you!” Michael is dimly aware that her voice has risen to a hoarse shout, far too loud for the small space between them. She feels futile. This—surely this is the worst thing to feel, this utter useless futility. “You would not leave them without a captain in the middle of a disaster zone due to—due to your—”_

_“—my compromised emotional state, yes.”_

_Michael stills._

_“Were those not the words you were looking for?” Philippa's voice is so level that anyone else would have mistaken it for placid._

_“Captain, you cannot—”_

_“Unless you are here to report that I am unfit to command this vessel, Commander, I suggest that you do not tell me what I can and cannot do.”_

_“No, Captain,” Michael says immediately. Even in her anger, she would never stray so far into falsehood. “I would never accuse you of such a thing.”_

_“Then why are you here?”_

_“You—” Michael’s mouth works silently for a few moments in disbelief as to why Philippa cannot seem to understand. “You could have died, Captain. You—you could be dead, Philippa, and for what?”_

_“For what?” Philippa’s voice is hard now, and fully angry. “For your life, Michael!”_

_“By endangering your own?”_

_“The only person whose life was in imminent danger was yours. I had already activated the transporter, the group of survivors were beamed up, and I knew that I could survive the impact of the debris with the immediate transport.”_

_“That—” Michael shakes her head, and she takes a step closer to Philippa, and her anger is diminishing and leaves a choking, unappeasable fear in its wake, “—that is not something you can know, Philippa. You can’t just—”_

_“I can’t take a risk to save your life?” Philippa reaches out then and touches Michael’s cheek, and Michael leans into her, hungry for proof that her skin is still warm, that her blood is still where it belongs. “Do you realize what you’re saying I should have done, Michael? Leave you for dead when there was still a chance to save you?”_

_“Yes,” Michael says, and her hands are gripping Philippa’s shoulders tightly, and from so close Philippa’s eyes are wet, as her own surely are. “Yes. You almost died, Philippa. You mustn't die for me. I—I don't think I can—”_

_“You can,” Philippa says, and her voice is harsh, but her touch is gentle. “And one day, you likely will have to.”_

_They are still for a moment, and then Michael feels herself crumple, falling against Philippa. She supposes that this will be the moment she talks about, once time has dulled the sick fear in her throat and turned it into a story, whenever anyone asks how she and Philippa initiated their relationship. She will be able to recall it easily one day, and perhaps she can even make it sound easy and clean: a dangerous mission, a split-second beam-out, a heartfelt confession—comprehensible, self-contained events. It would be easier than trying to explain the months beforehand and all the things which had grown between them until they were inexorable._

_“Are we talking about this now, Number One?” Philippa asks, lightly stroking Michael’s back._

_“That seems to be—the most advisable course of action,” Michael says. She slowly draws back from Philippa, keeping her hands on Philippa’s shoulders to stop her from slipping away. “Though the timing leaves something to be desired.”_

_Philippa laughs a little. “There will be no good times for anything, if we do this. There will also be regulations, and forms, and evaluations, and other sundry nightmares of bureaucracy. It isn’t pretty, Michael. It’s certainly not romantic. And aside from that—we are who we are.” Her voice wavers slightly as she cups Michael’s face in her hands. “The ship will always come first, and our crew, and our oaths of duty. There will be many more missions like the last one, and we will not always be as lucky as we were.” She swallows hard. “There will always be promises that we cannot make.”_

_Michael’s throat is dry. “I know,” she whispers. “I know. I wouldn’t be so angry, if I didn’t already know.”_

_Philippa is looking at her, scanning her features as if in an effort to memorize her, and Michael realizes that she is not the only one afraid of someone slipping away. She leans closer, until she can feel Philippa's every exhale._

_“May I?” Michael asks. She raises her hand and traces the tender line of Philippa’s jaw, tucking a stray curl of hair behind her ear with all the care due to living and growing things._

_“Yes,” Philippa says._

_Michael kisses her. It makes her lightheaded, the intimacy of learning the curve of Philippa's smile with her own, of sharing breath and skin-heat. Philippa's hands are warm on her neck and her back, and her mouth is warm as well, and Michael glories in the irrefutability of Philippa’s heartbeat beneath her palms, singing alive, alive, alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The anecdote at the museum is very specifically inspired by the one time my cousin and her fiance went to NYC to visit me and I thanked them by dragging them to a special exhibit on Hellenistic art and monologued at them for three hours.
> 
> The scene with T'Sana was the first one I wrote, back when the show was still airing. That was how badly I needed Michael to have friends who supported her.


	4. Convergence

“No, Michael, that one looks awful.”

“I’m keeping it.”

Philippa flicks at the surface of the PADD propped up on Michael’s chest, zooming into the her face and grimacing. “No.”

“Yes.” Michael flicks to the next picture from their walk around ShiKahr. Beneath the sheet, their legs are tangled together, and the press of their skin is somewhere between comfortable, lethargy-inducing warmth and sweltering heat. 

“No. I look like we've spent the day in the hot springs of Halinora, that's how sweaty I am.”

“I happen to like that picture.”

Philippa flops down, pressing her face into Michael’s neck. Her hair tickles the skin of Michael’s shoulder. “Fine,” she mutters.

Michael looks at the next picture of the two of them standing before the spread of the cliffs behind the city. Their face are flushed and shining, their eyes bright, lips-half open with words that the holographic picture did not capture. The red rock behind them frames them like wings. “You always look good,” she tells Philippa, curling her arm loosely around the other woman’s back. 

“I don’t trust your judgement.”

“My judgement is entirely correct.”

Michael sinks further into the fluffy pillows, flipping through the holos almost idly. She likes to keep all of the pictures she takes despite the glaring aesthetic shortcomings of many of them, wary of losing the precious, tiny gestures lost in everyday life which the images could preserve. It was on the Shenzhou that she picked up habit of photography; by the time she had grown old enough to think about monuments for fleeting things, she was on Vulcan, and pictures then seemed to her too sentimental and trivial. The multiple holos scattered over Philippa’s quarters had startled her the first time she saw them—why would a captain so decorated care so much about something so mundane?

She flips to a holo of their two faces, pressed close to fit in the frame. The sunset behind them is flare-bright, streaked with every shade of fire. The foreground of the picture is dark, with only the sides of their faces and the outermost strands of their hair caught in the light, but their smiles are visible even in the dimness, and Michael grins as she looks at it, pulling Philippa even closer. She now bears the title of—what does Philippa call her?—a _shutterbug_ gladly.

Her PADD pings with a notification, the pleasant chime loud in the quiet evening. Philippa stirs, not opening her eyes as she grumbles, “I told them not to comm unless the ship is self-destructing.”

“It’s not the crew, Philippa,” Michael says. Her finger hovers over the pop-up for a moment before opening up the message. “It’s my family on Mars.”

“Oh, okay. Say hello to Nick and Tye for me.” She feels Philippa smile against the slope of her shoulder. 

“I will.”

Michael carefully reads over the message, her eyes resting for a moment on the closing— _Love, Aunt Nicole, Uncle Tye, Lydia, and Janie._ Janie is fourteen and wants to be in Starfleet when she grows up, Lydia is seventeen and applying to an art college on Rigel II much to her parents’ consternation, Tye is her father’s younger brother and works as a primary school educator, Nicole is an astrophysicist. They all append their names to the word _love_ with ease and send it halfway across the Alpha Quadrant to a woman whom they only half-know. 

She slowly begins to type out her response to them, deleting and re-writing her salutation several times before moving onto the body of the message. _Dear Nicole, Tye, Lydia, and Janie, I hope this finds you well…_

Her aunt and uncle used to visit the outpost on Doctari Alpha once every few years when she was a child. They gave her the little plushie Deltan dragon which had been her favorite toy when she was a toddler. Her childhood memories of them are patchwork; she remembers that Tye looked like her father, down to the mischievous twinkle in his gaze, and Nicole—Aunt Nikky, Michael had called her when she was younger—stood at least fifteen feet tall in her child's eye, and she was undoubtedly the prettiest and smartest woman in the world, second only to Marisa Thompson-Burnham herself. They told her stories of Mars, the rust-red mountains and pale blue sunsets there, and when Uncle Tye talked about the little green men who would kidnap her and take her away, Aunt Nikky and Mama and Papa had laughed behind their hands as Michael solemnly informed him that “little green men” was no longer a correct term for offworlders.

After her parents’ death, it had taken her close to five years to talk to any of her extended family again. Aunt Nikky and Uncle Tye regularly communicated with Amanda about Michael’s life, but she herself refused to speak with them, half believing that her transition to life on Vulcan would be cleaner without her human family's influence, half fearing that they would say what she already held in her heart as the truth, that it was her fault, that it was her avaricious and selfish curiosity which had lead to tragedy that day. It was her fourteenth birthday when she finally consented to seeing them, and she had put on her finest robes to go meet her family—now designated Nicole Wright and Tye Burnham in her mind—and braced herself for something like a trial.

They were waiting at the shuttleport for her, their faces tight with anticipation. Michael froze at the sight of them, but Nicole rushed up to her and hugged her tightly, half-shouting, _Michael, my God, Michael, we’ve missed you so much, baby—_

Nicole must have felt Michael flinch then, or stiffen, because she released Michael at once and started apologizing profusely. Her face had fallen. Michael had no choice but to blurt that she was sorry, so, so sorry, even though she had wanted to wait for a place less tumultuous to apologize for what she had done, and then it was Nicole's turn to still. She looked at Michael in incomprehension before saying that Michael had nothing to apologize for, absolutely nothing, that she was not to blame for anything, not anything at all, and Nicole was just so glad to see Michael doing okay, and Tye had made her raspberry pie, it was her favorite back then, and she didn't know what Michael liked now, but everyone likes pie, right?

Michael didn't believe her then. It would be years until she did. She had refused the pie. She had refused to hug Nicole and Tye again, when they left from the planet, and she did not answer them when they told her to write. It was only at Amanda’s urging that she did so almost full year later, sending three stilted lines of text over which she had agonized for half a day. 

She still sometimes feels awkward writing to her family, ungainly in the cadence of her words while their affection for her flows so freely on the page. How much do they want to know, in truth, about the dinner she has just eaten? Is referring to Sarek as _the Ambassador_ too cold? Does her cousin really want her advice for a future career in the 'Fleet? Their answer to her first letter was paragraphs and paragraphs asking after her life—her schooling, her Vulcan family, her favorite foods and pastimes—and telling her about their own. Michael thinks that her aunt had taken pity on her during her Academy years, messaging her about her opinions on the latest studies on stellar mechanics instead of asking her about her day-to-day life. The intervals between her letters gradually shortened as she began to write twice instead of once a year, and then once every two months instead of once every six. 

She came to tell them about Amanda’s book exchanges, and the care packages her brothers sent her, and the things she learned eating lunch with the bridge crew, and Philippa. Nicole Wright became Aunt Nicole again, and Michael sometimes rolled the syllables of her name in her mouth, feeling the syllables of _Nikki_ in a child’s high tones. She asked for the recipe for Uncle Tye's pie to program into her replicator. Philippa helped her polish off the results of every single attempt, even though she would tell Michael each time that there was still something a little off with the consistency of her crust.

“I’ll send them a couple of the pictures from today,” Michael decides, jabbing at the surface of her PADD as she finishes a second paragraph about her plans for shore leave. “They’re always asking for some.”

“Just don’t send the ones where I look like I’ve just finished a footrace against a Bolian.”

“Philippa, they’ve been here, they know that ‘hot as Vulcan’ isn’t just an expression. The majority of offworlders look like they’re running a marathon while they’re on-planet.” Michael tilts her PADD in Philippa’s direction and nudges her with her shoulder until she raises her head. “Here, do these meet with your approval?”

The captain sleepily glares at the pictures before nodding her assent and slumping back to her previous position. Warmth bubbles within Michael’s chest, welling up her throat and eclipsing even the heat all around. A small smile twitches at the edges of her lips as she attaches the holos and types out the closing to her letter— _Sincerely yours, Michael_. She proofreads the body of the message once before sending it off and setting the PADD aside. Philippa makes a little huffing sound of acknowledgement as Michael curls around her. The pillow is lumpy from lack of use, and Michael shifts her head from side to side for a few moments before calling out to the room, “Computer, lights out.”

They are plunged into darkness. Outside their window, the stars glimmer above the stark outlines of the cliffs, haloed in a ruddy glow.

\-----

_[First officer’s log, Stardate 524.10, Standard Earth Date 2252.363. The Shenzhou has been called to the Gamma Lyrae system to oversee the trade negotiations between the Federation and the Nelinar homeworlds. The trip, estimated to take a further 2.4 days at our current speed, has so far been uneventful...]_

_The warp trails catch on the tack of their skin as they lie in Philippa’s bed, holding each other close while their breathing turns slow and languorous. Michael holds up their joined hands and admires the fit of their fingers, the play of illumination across their skin. “There’s always something about this light,” she muses, tracing the veins on the back of Philippa’s hand._

_“I used to think that it looked too blue,” Philippa says, brushing her lips over the knuckles of their clasped fingers. Her voice is full of breath, a tactile thing on the softness underneath Michael's chin. “Too cold. But then I grew to value it, because it tells me that we are in space, crossing to different places.”_

_“Warp light doesn’t exist in our world.” Michael props herself up on her elbow and looks down at Philippa, at the trails reflected like shooting stars in the dark of her eyes._

_“It’s a product of hyperdimensional space, yes.”_

_“It doesn’t exist in any world—that’s the spectacular thing. It’s not meant to be seen by our eyes. It’s an impossibility.”_

_“When you put it that way, it sounds like a fantasy.”_

_“A fairy tale of lights from no world,” Michael says, and her voice is soft with delight. “It cannot exist.”_

_“And yet it is real. It was created to be seen by our eyes,” Philippa slips a hand around Michael’s neck and draws her down into a lazy kiss. “It is a possibility by its very existence. It is able to be, due to the innovation of living beings,” she murmurs against Michael’s lips._

_Michael traces her fingertips lightly over Philippa’s collarbone, marvelling. “Everything we do is predicated on impossibilities.” She ducks down and presses her lips to the divot at the base of Philippa's throat where her pulse thrums, lingering for a moment before lying back down, tucking her head under Philippa’s chin._

_Two hundred years ago, scientists on Earth thought that travel beyond the speed of light was the stuff of fantasies. She hopes that two hundred years in the future, explorers will look back on their current modern progresses and label them small-minded._

_“Well, isn’t it supposed to be six impossible things before breakfast?”_

_Michael smiles. “At the very minimum.”_

_“I wonder,” Philippa says, her voice lazy and content, “if the designations of impossible and possible are even sensible. There is so little we know.”_

_“Some might find fear in that—how little we are, against the scope of existence.” Michael's eyes drift shut, and her voice is already distant and dreamy, for all her pretensions of heightened discourse. “Some might fear that there is danger inherent in exploration of the unknown, or that we were never meant to see things so far beyond us.”_

_Philippa laughs. “I have never understood this fear of the unknown. It is wonderful to me.” She traces aimless patterns on Michael’s skin, forming the syllables of her words with her fingers against the curves of Michael’s ribs. “I look into the black, and I feel awe. No one can pretend at omnipotence before it. No one can know it all. There is only discovery, and more discovery. That is why we do what we do.”_

_They perform impossibilities—they witness star-births and star-deaths, draw pictures across the universe. Michael slips into a doze, lulled by Philippa’s warmth and the movement of the warp trails outside the window. They say that people go into the spaces between the stars to find a home, to find a belonging and to find themselves, but Michael has learned that finding is something for colorful pebbles by a roadside and sandstone figurines in a market stall. Home is something to build, to cradle in her hands and carry with her. She has built one and grown to open it to other people, and she has reached within and learned of herself, of her own boundaries and the capacities contained therein—yet still she hungers to push onwards, eager for the otherworldly glow of the warp lights flashing like silver fish in a night river, leading the way to someplace new._

_It is so that they go ever on, with stories on their lips and wonder in their eyes._

\-----

“—told me to wake you up using any means necessary, Michael, those were your exact words—”

The hands shaking Michael's shoulder are insistent and cannot be deterred, no matter how far she burrows into the blankets. Michael opens her eyes blearily, squinting up at the face floating above hers. “Philippa, wha’?”

“It's 0500 hours. You told me to wake you up in time to see sunrise.”

 _—oh_. Right. Michael slowly levers herself up and rubs at her eyes. The sky outside their window is still murky, caught between night and twilight. She untangles herself from the sheets and gets to her feet, padding across the room to fish for a clean bathrobe from the drawers. “I’m going to go grab something from the kitchen for breakfast,” Michael says, kissing Philippa briefly before slipping out of their room.

She leads Philippa up to the upper story, juggling a half-eaten jar of compote and a couple rock peaches in her hands, a loaf of bread tucked under her arm. They clamber over the rails of the balcony and pick their way across the ceramic tiles to the top of the house, where the roof levels out to form a platform barely wide enough for two people. Michael carefully sets all the food down, and she laughs when one of the fruits escapes her grasp and Philippa catches it before it rolls away. A faint glow emerges over the horizon while they slice the bread and divide it between them. Michael unscrews the jar and spreads _gespar_ compote onto her bread, and the sweet, sticky smell fills the air, mixing with the scent of the night-blooming _nah’ru_ vines and the ever-present underlying notes of metal and sand.

“This was where I always went when I was a child, when I wanted to be alone,” Michael says. “It’s—more open, up here. Closer to the sky.”

“It’s beautiful,” Philippa says. She lies down on the roof and settles onto her side, finishing off a slice of bread.

Michael draws her knees up, loosely curling her arms around her legs as she bites into a rock peach. The flesh gives crisply under her teeth, fresh and slightly astringent. Her eyes are trained on the distant horizon. “It really is,” she says softly.

“When I was very young, I used to spend hours with our telescope, looking up at the night sky.” Philippa rolls onto her back, splaying out her arms and legs and commandeering the majority of the rooftop. “My mother would scold me all the time for sitting on the top of the rails of our apartment’s balcony—you’ve seen the place, right? The railing’s maybe four centimeters wide, and we’re fifteen stories up, and I still sat on it so I could get a clear shot to Jupiter’s moons.”

Michael turns to look at Philippa. “You’re lucky you didn’t fall from there.”

“I very nearly did, and then I found a new place to sit.” Philippa clasps her hands over her abdomen as she stares upwards. “I can’t imagine that Amanda and Sarek were exactly pleased when they found out you were coming up here, either.”

“No,” Michael snorts. “But eventually, they realized that I was going to keep coming up here regardless of what they told me, so they had the railing around the roof installed. It’s only a few meters up from the upper story balcony, but the feeling is completely different.”

“It feels like you’re up there. With them.”

The stars—they glimmer as they ever have, winking in the red sky and promising worlds endless. Michael can still feel their call, even as they are hidden from view when the air over the horizon lightens like embers from an old hearth brightening with a breath of wind. The cliffs are pulled from the gloom, broadly drawn in strokes of russet. Below them, the city rouses itself; windows are lit and doors opened to the cooler morning air. Philippa sits up and moves close to Michael when the stars have covered themselves entirely. Side by side, they watch the slow unveiling of the sky.

“The old writers used to call the sunrise _lashark_ ,” Michael says. She idly holds up one of her hands against the light, watching as it filters through her questing fingers and limns her skin. It is gold and red combined now, rare and dazzling. “The sun arrives, the eye of fire, to illuminate the hidden places.”

The captain is silent, her eyes wide at the splendor before them. Michael presses her temple to Philippa’s and whispers, “I am glad you are here to see those places with me.”

Philippa glances at her, and the light plays about her, catching in her soft gaze and her wide smile. Michael hugs her tightly, half-shielding her face from the emerging brilliance. 

The dawn breaks, and the dust in the air is lit aflame.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so much for reading! All and any feedback is welcome and highly appreciated.
> 
> This fic lived as a series of 12 snippets on my google drive for about four months until I decided to beat it into shape. The headcanon the Philippa gets spacesick belongs to nomisunrider. Anything from the tie-in novels has been (either gleefully or unwittingly) ignored, and there are a lot of inaccuracies in the timeline, e.g. Michael was made first officer in 2255, I think, and Joann Owosekun wasn't on the Shenzhou's crew. I've only been watching TOS for a hot minute, so I don't know how accurate my portrayal of Vulcan and the Vulcan family is. All this was only possible due to the existence of Memory Alpha and the VLI.


End file.
